jealous.”
“No!”
I was colder. More tired. More frustrated. Getting hungry. My head was starting to hurt and my shoulders ached. Too many thoughts raced through my head. This had to stop.
The rapid fire continued and I heard, “You have to admit, her sleeping with some twenty-five-year-old grad student makes more sense. And she was a hottie! I’m sure Steven would have jumped at that.”
“He didn’t!”
Volume knob a half-inch louder.
“You can’t know that.”
“He was probably seeing her for a while. You couldn’t have known.”
Shaking my head, “He wasn’t!”
An excited voice, “You can’t be sure. How could you know?”
“BECAUSE STEVEN THACKER IS GAY!”
Volume knob broken off—lying on the floor.
The sudden silence after the detective’s machine-gun repartee was jolting. I couldn’t hear a sound around me. Then it slowly came back into focus. Traffic in the distance. The harsh breeze scraping off the corner of the recreation building behind me.
Then the soft mumbling.
The footsteps behind me resuming.
The pairs and trios of students walking into and out of the building.
The pace of the steps picking up. They had important things to do now.
They had to go tell the story about how a professor at this small school where everybody seems to know each other, just “outed” a closet homosexual by screaming it at the top of his lungs in the middle of campus.
If there was a vat of molten steel around to dive into, I would have been putting on my best swim trunks.
Mile 5
A sharp burst of noise breaks the cadenced sounds of shuffling feet and measured breaths. My shoulders and arms involuntarily tense up and the muscles contracting in my neck wage a battle with my reflexive compulsion to look in the direction of the shot. In milliseconds, the sound waves ricochet off the surrounding residences, the statues and monuments in the park, sending countless panicked pigeons skyward. Torsos attempt to twist left while legs do their best to maintain an unswerving path. My throat closes and my legs lose some strength as the audible shockwave penetrates my chest. If I didn’t know any better I would swear that I can feel my pupils expanding into giant pools of tar. Anybody here who is wearing a heart rate monitor will surely notice a spike in an otherwise dependable pattern.
More loud bangs follow with the sound of clashing metal. A pattern of beats emerge and then I scold myself for my nervousness. A high school band in heavy blue uniforms is lined up on the left side of the road. The abrupt outburst of snare drums and symbol crashes serve the dual purpose of scaring the hell out of me and pulling off a razor sharp introduction to “Eye of the Tiger.” My edginess has made me hypersensitive to stimuli that, under normal circumstances, wouldn’t alarm me. As my body’s adrenaline production subsides to respectable levels, I reorient myself to my location and its significance.
I see a crowd gathering about 200 yards past the water and first aid stations on the right. A young girl, about twelve years old, hands me a paper cup of cold water when it’s my turn to pass. The waxed surface of the cup feels slick against my sweaty fingers and my hand still trembles from the stun of noise. This has to be the first time in my life that I wished a band would have been playing a Rick Astley tune. The water station girl was trying to be nice by filling the cup to the rim, but the predictable result is that most of the water spills out as soon as I take it from her hand. I try to slow down to stop the spillage and to focus my eyes on the circle of concerned faces in the approaching distance. Somebody nudges me in the back. A silent request to speed up and drift toward the middle of the road, or get out of the way. I take a couple of sips of water, toss the cup to my right into a cemetery of its relatives, increase my momentum and merge back into the flow of foot traffic.
I see medical personnel up
“No!”
I was colder. More tired. More frustrated. Getting hungry. My head was starting to hurt and my shoulders ached. Too many thoughts raced through my head. This had to stop.
The rapid fire continued and I heard, “You have to admit, her sleeping with some twenty-five-year-old grad student makes more sense. And she was a hottie! I’m sure Steven would have jumped at that.”
“He didn’t!”
Volume knob a half-inch louder.
“You can’t know that.”
“He was probably seeing her for a while. You couldn’t have known.”
Shaking my head, “He wasn’t!”
An excited voice, “You can’t be sure. How could you know?”
“BECAUSE STEVEN THACKER IS GAY!”
Volume knob broken off—lying on the floor.
The sudden silence after the detective’s machine-gun repartee was jolting. I couldn’t hear a sound around me. Then it slowly came back into focus. Traffic in the distance. The harsh breeze scraping off the corner of the recreation building behind me.
Then the soft mumbling.
The footsteps behind me resuming.
The pairs and trios of students walking into and out of the building.
The pace of the steps picking up. They had important things to do now.
They had to go tell the story about how a professor at this small school where everybody seems to know each other, just “outed” a closet homosexual by screaming it at the top of his lungs in the middle of campus.
If there was a vat of molten steel around to dive into, I would have been putting on my best swim trunks.
Mile 5
A sharp burst of noise breaks the cadenced sounds of shuffling feet and measured breaths. My shoulders and arms involuntarily tense up and the muscles contracting in my neck wage a battle with my reflexive compulsion to look in the direction of the shot. In milliseconds, the sound waves ricochet off the surrounding residences, the statues and monuments in the park, sending countless panicked pigeons skyward. Torsos attempt to twist left while legs do their best to maintain an unswerving path. My throat closes and my legs lose some strength as the audible shockwave penetrates my chest. If I didn’t know any better I would swear that I can feel my pupils expanding into giant pools of tar. Anybody here who is wearing a heart rate monitor will surely notice a spike in an otherwise dependable pattern.
More loud bangs follow with the sound of clashing metal. A pattern of beats emerge and then I scold myself for my nervousness. A high school band in heavy blue uniforms is lined up on the left side of the road. The abrupt outburst of snare drums and symbol crashes serve the dual purpose of scaring the hell out of me and pulling off a razor sharp introduction to “Eye of the Tiger.” My edginess has made me hypersensitive to stimuli that, under normal circumstances, wouldn’t alarm me. As my body’s adrenaline production subsides to respectable levels, I reorient myself to my location and its significance.
I see a crowd gathering about 200 yards past the water and first aid stations on the right. A young girl, about twelve years old, hands me a paper cup of cold water when it’s my turn to pass. The waxed surface of the cup feels slick against my sweaty fingers and my hand still trembles from the stun of noise. This has to be the first time in my life that I wished a band would have been playing a Rick Astley tune. The water station girl was trying to be nice by filling the cup to the rim, but the predictable result is that most of the water spills out as soon as I take it from her hand. I try to slow down to stop the spillage and to focus my eyes on the circle of concerned faces in the approaching distance. Somebody nudges me in the back. A silent request to speed up and drift toward the middle of the road, or get out of the way. I take a couple of sips of water, toss the cup to my right into a cemetery of its relatives, increase my momentum and merge back into the flow of foot traffic.
I see medical personnel up
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